We recently covered the fundamentals of account-based marketing here on the ion interactive blog with a focus on how to scale to your target accounts. At the conclusion of the blog post, it was pretty clear that optimizing your content for ABM can take a lot of time and effort to figure out. But the benefits far outweigh the effort needed to get started.

Using rich experiences and technology to create a dynamic experience is essentially creating ‘smart content’. What does this mean exactly?

Leverage existing content and data in a unique way to create better experiences

Agility

Personalization and participation

Create a feedback loop

In my last post, I mainly focused on ‘hard’ content such as static white papers or infographics. While this content certainly has its benefits, in some cases it can create a ton of content that you may or may not need in your ecosystem. In reflection, this is how I developed these four key points to focus on for ABM.

Leverage existing content and data in a unique way to create better experiences

You already have tons of great content that you know can hit home with your audience. With ABM, you can leverage the data collected from those experiences to develop new assets. Instead of starting from scratch, why not repurpose your existing content into something new and fresh? Turning a static infographic into an interactive experience with more touch points and interactive content elements can increase your understanding of the end user. In order to be successful, it is important to have the ability to test and optimize your content on the fly and not deal with multiple versions of content. #ABMHack

Agility

For modern marketers, being agile is key to succeeding in today's marketplace. In order to be successful, you have to remain agile and ready to adjust or side-step with short notice and, with ABM, this is even more important.

Typically, when using a static PDF, making content changes or iterations can be painful. This is where interactive content outshines since it’s quicker and easier to create iterations or change direction. With a web based content approach, you have greater agility when it comes to updating content for each account.

Personalization and participation

Since interactive content is web-based, it’s much easier to personalize your content without having to create multiple versions of an experience. With interactive content, you can easily leverage data from many areas of your marketing technology ecosystem to create a personalized experience. Additionally, you can easily promote participation with elements like quizzes and assessment built into your experience.

Create a feedback loop

Creating a feedback loop may be the most valuable aspect of using interactive content for account-based marketing. When using web-based content, tying iterations to prospects in order to collect specific data is a breeze.

In writing these last few posts on ABM I’ve realized that account-based marketing is very similar to traditional vertical marketing. With ABM, you’re creating super targeted content for your users which will yield stronger results for your users. You could say that Account-Based Marketing is Traditional Vertical Marketing on steroids!